


Hope is for Presidents, Dreams are for People who are Sleeping

by alouette_des_champs



Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - RENT Fusion, Angst, Can't believe that tag exists, Character Death, Drug Addiction, Drug Use, F/F, F/M, Families of Choice, HIV/AIDS, Heavy Angst, Heroin, Homelessness, Illnesses, Implied/Referenced Suicide, M/M, Recreational Drug Use, Sad Ending, Sad in general tbh, Terminal Illnesses
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-07
Updated: 2018-10-28
Packaged: 2019-07-27 06:03:48
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 11,534
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16212977
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alouette_des_champs/pseuds/alouette_des_champs
Summary: The AIDS epidemic sweeps through the city, destroying entire communities. Survivors grapple with the enormity of what they've lost while the still-afflicted wait their turn to die. One relationship ends too soon, and another begins in the middle of a nightmare.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I finished the Balance Arc of TAZ and re-listened to "Rent" in the same weekend...those two things kind of got trash-compacted together in my head, and here we are. I 105% know that this has already been done, judging purely by the sheer size of the cross-section of former theater kids and D&D fans, but that's a-okay with me. I'm also willing to bet my take is a lot more HIV-focused, 'cause ya girl is a social worker by trade, 'nuff said. I didn't want to commit to setting this in NYC because I've been there all of once, so my setting is officially "basically NYC but not." 
> 
> **This is a fucking grim fic, folks, so if you're feeling blue today, I'd put off the read.** I couldn't decide on a rating, so let me know if you think it should be something other than "M." I have most of it pre-written, so chapters should come out pretty fast.
> 
> Big, big S/Os to the McElroys for making me care about characters they gave names such as Barry fucking Bluejeans and "Rent" for being the OG fanfic of "La bohème." If there's interest, I could be partial to doing another fic in this verse/in another wacky AU, so hit me up in them comments, son. Title from AJJ's "People II 2: Still Peoplin'." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kOwhnES8FcM

Taako breezed into the stuffy room at the tail-end of visiting hours, arms laden with inexpensive treats from the outside world. He tried his best to be cheerful when he visited the hospital, which he did as often as he could. He tried to dress well, to wear a little makeup, to maintain some semblance of normalcy. 

The man in the bed did not look like himself. He was so thin that his dark skin had shrunken close to bone, giving him an eerie, skeletal appearance. Just months before, he had been good-looking—a little gaunt, but the kind of sexy-gaunt that artists or intellectuals get when they throw themselves body and soul into their work. He had been tall, and his presence had been reassuringly commanding. Now, it looked like standing up would break him in half. He was connected to various equipment with a tangle of wires and tubes that never failed to make Taako feel nervous. There was a beat-up boombox sitting on the bedside table, surrounded with little stacks of books and empty vases. The flowers that had come in them had long since died and been tossed by nurses. Kravitz had been in the hospital for a long time.

The first thing Taako did was plunk a new bouquet of flowers into one of the vases, a vibrant springtime arrangement even though it was the dead of winter. He was adamant about keeping “dead people flowers” far away from the room. He dumped the extra vases out in the sink and, after a few moments of debate, threw them all out. They were ugly, and nobody was going to miss them. He deposited his gifts on the table, then stroked Kravitz’s cheek to wake him.

“Hello, handsome,” he said softly. “I brought you some incredibly trashy magazines, some more of your books, a couple of tapes…I also made brownies. They’re the good kind.” He winked. The pan of brownies had enough THC in them to convince an elephant to drop out of college and join the Peace Corps. The man tried to smile, but he was obviously in pain despite the morphine drip beside his bed. “Do you want some light? Some music?”

“No, I’m okay. Come here.” Taako crawled into the bed, fashionable boots and all, and made himself comfortable, cuddled up alongside the painfully bony body under the heap of thin hospital blankets. He smoothed the other man's hair against his head with a practiced hand.

“You know what I was just thinking about? Remember when we first started dating? And you said that you would drop me like a hot potato if I got ugly, fat, crippled, or boring?” Kravitz chuckled wheezily. For a moment, Taako’s angular face contorted with guilt, but nobody saw it, and nobody ever would, if he could help it.

“That still stands,” he replied haughtily. It was better to keep up their usual rapport than to go for anything too sentimental. Then they would both just cry, and there was nothing productive or comforting about that, not anymore. Not at this point. There was no more _when you get better_ or _when you get out of the hospital_ or _next year_ or even _tomorrow._ Just _now, this moment, and it might as well be a pleasant one._

“I think this is the most crippled, ugly, and boring I’m gonna get. At least I’m not fat.” 

“Do you, by chance, remember the first time we met?” Taako said coyly, changing the subject.

“Oh, don’t bring this up…are you ever going to forgive me?” the other man groaned, rolling his eyes.

“You cornered me at Lucas Miller’s birthday party and did a cockney accent for _forty-five minutes._ I swear. I was counting every godforsaken second.”

“That was the drunkest I’ve ever been.”

“Bullshit. As if. That wasn’t the last anybody heard of cockney Kravitz. Christmases, birthdays, Easters, bar mitzvahs, Cinco de Mayos, every Saturday night…” He listed them off on his long, slender fingers.

“You like it. It’s exotic and exciting.”

“You’re not even good at it. It’s an embarrassment.” He sounded exasperated, but he was smiling fondly. 

“Clearly you aren’t accustomed to being in the presence of a gentleman.” It was amazing, how Kravitz could still sound so lofty when he was lying in a hospital bed, down half his body weight and being fed through a tube.

“You know that my love life was basically WBA fight night before I met you.” This was one of Taako's favorite jokes to make, even though it got his sister all up in arms about “minimizing.” Kravitz had always understood his compulsion to laugh at himself, even at the parts of his life that nobody else could find any humor in. He knew that there were certain stories, certain scars that made his blood boil, but unlike Lup, he could keep that to himself, and that was one of the things that Taako loved about him. 

“It better not go back to being that way after I’m gone.” He was trying to keep his tone light, but it broke, and there it was again, that useless urge to cry and rage at the universe for things that were simply not going to change. 

“I’ve hung up my gloves, coach,” Taako said softly. It was the closest he was ever going to get to saying what he meant: _there’s nobody for me after you._

He steered the conversation back into calmer waters by telling an anecdote about Magnus’ cat getting into some psychedelic mushrooms that Lup had been saving in her underwear drawer and tripping balls for an entire day. They spent a while reminiscing and small-talking about music until Taako could tell that speaking was becoming taxing for Kravitz.

“Do you want me to read to you a little?” he asked, already reaching over him to the table to get the book they had been working their way through, a hefty omnibus of Poe’s works marked in the middle with a gum wrapper.

“Mmhm. Where you left off last time.” Taako cleared his throat dramatically and begun to read.

“ _During the whole of a dull, dark, and soundless day in the autumn of the year, when the clouds hung oppressively low in the heavens_ —I swear to God, only you would make me read this spooky, goth shit— _I had been passing alone, on horseback, through a singularly dreary tract of country…_ ” Halfway through the story, he paused and looked over at Kravitz, who was clearly fighting to stay awake. Taako kissed his forehead—it was unnaturally hot.

“Are you too tired, babe? I can go.”

“No, it’s okay…I know it’s hard for you to get here.”

“Pshaw. Ain’t no thang.”

“I think I do need to sleep.” He rubbed at his eyes. “I love you.”

“I love you too. Go to sleep.” Taako stayed where he was, his forehead pressed into his boyfriend’s hair, tracing idle patterns on his chest over the blanket, until Kravitz was sound asleep. He wanted to stay there, to sleep there, but he had work early in the morning and he couldn’t call off again, not without being fired. He needed the money for his own treatment, though the point of staying alive was becoming more and more elusive. Lup would be sad, but she was tough. She would make it.

Taako wandered down to the lobby of the hospital, popped a quarter into the payphone, and called Magnus. He was the only one with a car, and he was never too busy to make a trip out to the hospital. Anything to distract himself. It had been almost two years since his wife had slit her wrists in the bathtub, so much heroin in her system that she couldn’t possibly have felt any of it. She had left behind no note, only a brief, brilliant art career, years of addiction, and a diagnosis she simply could not face. Countless dirty needles were floating around the city. Everyone knew that, now that it was too late.

He couldn’t help but think that Julia had had the right idea. A quick, painless, and relatively dignified death on her own terms. He wasn’t quite callous enough to say that out loud to Magnus. 

He waited outside even though it was freezing, shifting from leg to leg and chain-smoking furiously. It took about half an hour for Magnus to pull up in his rusty, noisy, fender-less jalopy. He had once been a mountain of a man, but years of drug use and disease had whittled him much thinner than his frame would suggest possible. He was drumming his fingers on the steering wheel, nodding along to what was, without a doubt, some shitty hair metal. Taako jogged over gratefully and slid into the passenger’s seat. 

“How is he?” Magnus asked gently. 

“What the fuck do you want me to say? He’s dying.” _And so are we, but slower._

“Do you want to come to my meeting? I’m headed there now.” Magnus was always trying to come to get him to come to the goddamn HIV/AIDS support group. It was run in the basement of a church near their building, a weekly spoon-feeding of feel-good bullshit that wasn’t going to cure anybody of anything.

“No, but you’re never going to stop asking, are you?”

“Nope!” 

“Fine. Onward, kemosabe,” Taako drawled, kicking his high-heeled boots up on the dashboard and crossing his arms. “But just this once.”

*

The basement was old and yellowed, wood-paneled, smelling perpetually of past spaghetti dinners and old person perfume. A table set up near the door was laden with a half-full coffee pot, stacks of Styrofoam cups, and various packets of powdered creamer and sugar. People were filtering in, taking their coats off, chatting idly. Some of them looked alright; some of them, not so much. 

They were greeted by Merle, a short, grizzled man who presided over the group like everybody’s hippie grandpa. He was not a pastor or a reverend, and became very indignant if anyone referred to him as such. He was, he kept insisting, a nondenominational minister. That distinction mattered because the pastors and the reverends of the world were busy preaching that the gays and the drug addicts were being duly punished by God, while the nondenominational ministers gave up their weeknights to dole out free counsel to the fallen.

“Magnus! Good to see you. How’s NA coming?” They shook hands warmly.

“I just got my one year chip.” Magnus held up his keyring with an obnoxiously proud smile.

“Wonderful! And who’s this?” There was no judgment in his gaze, and no real pity, either—just a kind of affable humor. 

“This is my friend—”

“Taako. From TV.” He has never actually been on TV, but he said this for two reasons, one being that there was the off chance that someone would mistakenly recognize him from something and give him free stuff, and two being that you were supposed to manifest what you wanted in life. Mostly the first one. He shook Merle’s hand.

“I’m Merle. From real life.” He laughed at his own joke. “I don’t have a TV.”

“Of course you don’t,” he said acidly. Magnus shot him a look. 

“Well, it’s nice to meet you. We’re about to get started.” They took seats in the circle of folding chairs. Dying of AIDS didn’t mean you had to dress like a peasant, but everyone at the meeting seemed to have missed that memo. Taako slumped over in his chair, his arms wrapped around his middle. His stomach hurt, maybe from not eating, maybe from stress, maybe from the overwhelmingly saccharine energy of the group.

“I like to call this circle the Zone of Truth.” He paused for a moment as if he thought that this was an incredibly clever moniker. “Everything you say here stays here. I want everyone to be able to speak their truth without any fear of judgement or retribution. Let’s go around the circle and each give one win and one loss for this week. Then we’ll talk about mindfulness.” Unbelievably, Merle actually had a baton decorated with feathers that he passed to the person beside him, apparently passing on the “speaking stick.”

People talked about health scares and financial losses, the deaths of friends, their family members disowning them. They talked about small moments of joy: good news, good friends, waking up another day. Merle never rushed anyone or pushed them farther than they seemed to want to go. He asked questions—which, in Taako’s opinion, violated the cardinal rule of the speaking stick—but they were gentle questions. Finally, a skinny woman with bad skin handed the baton off to Magnus. 

“This week is the two-year anniversary of my wife’s death.”

“How are you coping?” Merle asked, crossing his legs.

“I’m not. I’m really tempted to use again.” Leave it to Magnus to be so goddamn honest. 

“Have you talked to any of your friends?” He looked guiltily over at Taako.

“I don’t want to put any more on their plates.”

“Don’t you think they would want to help you if they could? You want to help them, don’t you?”

“I guess.”

“That’s why the good lord put people in our lives for us to lean on. We all need support, no matter what our journey is.” A few of the people in the circle nodded along. Taako felt like he was going to barf.

“That’s my loss for the week, even though that’s kind of my loss every week. My win…” He grinned and elbowed Taako in the ribs. “Is getting this guy to come with me to this meeting.” Taako rolled his eyes. Magnus gave him the baton.

“Pass,” he said, immediately handing the speaking stick off. Merle did not seem fazed; he just nodded and turned his attention to the next person in the circle.

The rest of the group was a lot of the horseshit that Taako had come to except from these people. Live in the moment, choose happiness over fear, daily affirmations, meditation, yadda yadda. He zoned out, but he was aware of a vague, strangely positive feeling in the back of his mind. He realized that he was glad that Magnus had this. Even if it was absolute flower-child kum-ba-yah nonsense, he deserved it, deserved to believe in it, if it made him feel even a fraction better. 

Later, while they were in the car on the short drive home, he said, “You can talk about Julia with me” It sounded robotic, coming out of his mouth. “If you want. It won’t make me feel any more or less like Satan himself is slowly ripping my immortal soul out through my asshole.”

“That’s probably the nicest thing you’ve ever said to me,” Magnus said with a grin, clapping him on the shoulder. “Thanks, buddy.”

“Yeah, yeah.”

*

It had been months since Lup had thought about herself at any length, but the stark fact was that she was going to have to plan for the future, no matter how lonely and desperate the future was shaping up to be. 

That day, she took the bus down to the community college to see about financial aid. As soon as she stepped into the tastefully decorated office, she felt out of place in her ratty faux-fur coat and impractical wide-brimmed hat, but she was good at hiding discomfort. She approached the desk, which was manned by an unremarkable, bespectacled white boy wearing double denim—jeans on the bottom, jacket on the top. It was a bold fashion move, and she wasn’t sure if she approved of the risk or found it unpalatable. 

“Hi. I’m looking for some information about financial aid.”

“Do you have an appointment?” he asked, glancing up. Lup shook her head. “Okay. I’ll put you on the list. I’m sure a counselor will be available to speak with you in a few minutes.” She sat down in a chair a few feet away from the desk and spent a few minutes watching the guy shuffle papers and make notes, cheerfully doing what looked to her like soul-crushing office labor.

“Do you go to school here?” He looked a little older than her, a little older than your typical undergraduate student, but that didn’t mean anything. 

“Yeah,” he replied without looking up. “This is my work-study job. I’m a biology major.”

“Oh, right on? You look like a different type of nerd.” Lup was a boundary-tester. It was unconscious, inherited, Problematic Foster Child Behavior #46. The first thing she did when she met a new person was find the point at which they lost their patience and push them past it, see how explosive it was when they snapped, gauge how safe she was in any given situation. This kid, however, only looked mildly affronted. 

“What type of nerd do I look like?”

“I dunno.” She squinted at him. “Computer.” He nodded, as if that assessment seemed fair to him.

“What are you thinking about majoring in?” The way he said it gave her a strange boost of confidence. Like she had the right to major in anything besides petty theft and small-time check fraud. 

“Chemistry.” She said this with a haughty jab of her chin, as if she expected to be challenged, but he just smiled.

“Cool.”

She paused expectantly for a long moment, waiting for the other shoe to drop. “I thought you were going to tell me that I look like a different type of nerd.” He looked at her somewhat blankly. “You know. Like, I tell a joke, you bring the joke back…it’s banter…”

“Oh. No. You don’t look like any type of nerd I’ve ever met, and I’ve met a lot of nerds.” The biology major smiled again, as if she hadn’t just brazenly insulted him several times.

“Thanks?”

“You’re welcome.” 

It took more than an hour for the counselor to call Lup’s name. She chatted with the kid behind the desk, whose name was Barry, while he filed form after form almost deftly. He was surprisingly easy to talk to, for someone she ostensibly had nothing in common with. By the time the counselor stuck his head into the room to retrieve her, she was starting to think that maybe this university could handle her. Not the watered-down, semi-polite, golly-gosh version of her, either—the real thing.

When she came out of the office carrying an imposing stack of forms, however, that optimism had dimmed considerably. She grimaced and planted her elbows on the desk. “What time do you get off, Barry Bluejeans? I’m gonna need your bureaucratic expertise. I’ll pay you in weed.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here are the three songs I mention in this chapter, in case you're one of them Gen Zs.  
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Enzxdvo8NOk  
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x0RAarVqC-E  
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8OLWp1xT9EA
> 
> Thanks to everyone for their kind comments! This chapter is probably the lightest, which isn't saying much.

The building they lived in looked like it had no business being lived in by anybody. It was taller than it was wide, crumbling brick, and the windows on the ground floor were covered with thick iron bars. It was sandwiched between two other nearly identical buildings. All three had a loose congregation of winos and ne’er-do-wells hanging around on the concrete stoops dressed in dirty flannel, trading paper bags and bitching about how cold it was. 

Lup led Barry past the ragtag welcome wagon and into the middle building, up two flights of stairs littered with mouse droppings, paper bags, discarded newspapers, and the occasional used condom, and through a battered blue door that was pocked with what may or may not have been bullet holes. 

“Hello, degenerates,” she called as she waltzed into the apartment. “This is Barry Bluejeans. He's a genius.” Carey was sitting on the bare mattress that had been haphazardly pushed to one side of the room, leaning against the wall with Killian’s head in her lap. Killian was holding a newspaper over her face, one of those error-ridden, badly printed underground publications that seemed to spring up and die off every other week. Lucretia was curled up on the battered couch. The room was lit with several candles of various shapes and sizes, strategically placed around the room to distribute the light most evenly. The only other items of note were a portable, battery-powered record player on a stool that was cranking out a scratchy rendition of 'Life on Mars?', a colorful stack of records, a set of bowls full of water and cat food respectively, and a huge painting hanging on the wall, hard to fully piece together in the half-light, but obviously ethereal and beautiful.

“Oh, thank God it’s you,” Carey sighed, exhaling a cloud of cigarette smoke and clutching at her heart dramatically. “I thought you were my fucking brother come back to try to squeeze me for more cash I don’t have. He got one of those groupies pregnant, did you know that? Fuck’s sake.” 

Lup played an enthusiastic air guitar solo. “What’s wrong, big sis? You don’t wanna fund the next Slash’s promising career?” Carey rolled her eyes.

“Wait, can we back up for just a second?” Lucretia said, throwing up a hand. She was holding a camera in the other, pointed steadily at Lup and Barry. “Did you say Barry _Bluejeans?_ I _know_ that’s not the name this man’s sweet, sweet mama gave him.” Lucretia was always taping everything on the clunky, outdated camera that she'd been carrying around for as long as anyone had known her. She was a filmmaker, she said, and she was making a documentary about the daily lives of people who had been pushed to the fringes of society. She had accumulated what must have been hours upon hours of footage, but nothing ever seemed to come of it. Her closest friends suspected that she was just afraid of forgetting. 

“Presumably not, but it’s the name I have bestowed upon him, and look at his face. He fucking loves it.” Barry was making a face that was somehow a cringe, a smile, and a grimace all at the same time. “Double B, this is Lucretia, Carey, and Killian.” 

“Nice to meet you,” he muttered. “You can just call me Barry.”

“Bluejeans or nothing!” Lup proclaimed, shedding her coat and dumping it on the back of the couch. “Where’s my doppelganger? This apartment is crawling with lesbians.” 

“He’s at the hospital,” Carey replied. “I got you two a little present.” She dug in her jacket pocket and tossed a bottle of nail polish onto the couch. Lup picked it up and squinted at the label.

“This is primo shit. You didn’t pay for this, did you?” She asked this with a teasing lilt; it was clearly a provocation. 

“Oh, here we go,” Killian groaned, covering her face with the paper. 

“Lup, I thought we were friends. Don’t insult me like this,” Carey said imperiously, glaring at the other woman. “The last time I paid for something, Jimmy Carter was president. I was still losing my baby teeth. Sonny and Cher were together.” Carey was a slight woman, and she had always been slight, but there was something about the hollowness of her cheeks that wasn't altogether healthy. She had shared one too many needles with Magnus and Julia back in the day. There was no pinpointing which one of them had been infected first, but it was clear to everyone that she blamed herself for swapping blood with the wrong people and bringing the virus home with her. By extension, she blamed herself for Julia’s suicide. She had been there that day, useless, passed out on a futon, completely unresponsive when Magnus had shaken her and shaken her. 

She was clean now. She said she was, anyway. After his initial spiral, Magnus had started going to NA, had gotten a not-too-shitty job assembling cabinets in some warehouse, and had found other things, other joys, somehow. Carey didn't seem to be able to. She couldn't hold a job, and her health wasn't stabilizing like Magnus' had. If she hadn't met Killian teaching classes in the basement boxing gym where she went to hit people without getting in trouble, she probably wouldn't have made it through the year. Julia's way out was very tempting.

“That explains why we can’t make rent.” Carey stuck her tongue out. Lup gestured expansively at all the candles in the room. “Did we walk in on the beginning of an incredibly romantic threesome, or did they cut the power?”

“Yeah. I tried to show some leg to change their minds, but it turns out that ‘muscle-bound dyke’ wasn’t the guy’s type,” Killian put in. 

“She didn’t 'show some leg' as much as she 'threatened to knock him out,' but you know, same difference,” Lucretia explained, rolling her eyes. Lup followed suit.

“It really, truly shocks me that that didn't work out for you. Really. Barry Bluejeans, does your place have power?”

“What place? I’ve been sleeping in a friend’s van,” he blurted. She burst into laughter. He looked as if he wished he hadn’t said that particular tidbit out loud.

“Not even your own van?”

“Not even my own van!” Barry chuckled, even though he was slowly turning bright red. 

“Take notes, girls. It could always be worse.” Lup wagged her finger at them in warning as she made her way around the couch, kicking off her boots dramatically. Barry followed. He kept his coat and his shoes on. 

“Exit, Lup and Barry Bluejeans,” Lucretia narrated, following them with her camera. “A figure shrouded in mystery whose real name we’ll probably never know.”

Lup grabbed one of the candles and took it with them to her bedroom, but it didn’t add much. The natural light that was still coming through the window was enough to see by. She flopped down on her bed and grabbed a small box from her nightstand. The room was tiny, but there were two beds jammed into the space with only a few feet between them and a dresser shoved up under the window on the far side. It was clear that two people shared the dresser, split top and bottom. The drawers on the top were all wide open, wrinkled garments hanging out, while the ones on the bottom were shut neatly. Barry sat down on the edge of the second bed. She gestured toward it with a lighter she had pulled out of her pocket.

“I share with my brother. It’s not weird at all for two grown adult siblings to share a bedroom.”

“Definitely not.” There wasn’t much in the way of decoration in the room, but there were a few more paintings obviously made by the same artists and a couple of Polaroids tacked to the wall. He was looking them over as if they could help him decipher some sort of code she had presented him with. Lup had taken all the photos, before they'd had to pawn the camera. They were poorly focused and badly lit, because of course she had been too impatient to actually learn how to use the fucking thing, but she liked them anyway. She had also been the one to stick them up on the wall, staunchly ignoring Taako's protests. He wouldn't be seen within ten feet of anything that could be construed as remotely sentimental. They were mostly group shots of their friends, but there was one that she particularly liked. It was the street outside their place, in the spring. Kravitz was dipping Taako like the world's most dramatic ballroom dancer. Taako, clearly surprised, had his mouth wide open, and she had captured the exact moment that his sunglasses had hit the sidewalk and lost a lens. She liked to say that it looked like that picture of the sailor kissing the nurse on V-Day, but everyone else frequently found occasion to tell her that she wasn't a skilled enough photographer for that to be the case.

“Do you and your friend share a bed in the back of that van? Snuggle for warmth?” She wiggled her eyebrows as she opened the box, filling the room with the pungent smell of marijuana, and began to roll a blunt deftly. His eyes flicked back to her face, and he laughed. 

“No. God, no. We have sleeping bags. Separate.” He indicated the wall above his head, where a somewhat abstract oil painting of a duck in a pond was hanging. “Who did all these paintings?”

“Oh, our friend Magnus’ wife was an artist…he brought a lot of her best stuff when he moved in. Aren’t they bitchin'?” She lit up and took a hit, then offered the blunt to him. 

He hesitated. “Um, you don’t actually have to pay me. With weed or anything else.”

“I’m not. I’m smoking up my new college friend while he helps me get my shit together.” She shoved it at him more forcefully, and he gave in with a shrug. They spent a couple of hours smoking and poring over the financial aid forms, Barry asking the questions and jotting down Lup's answers diligently. Being high didn't seem to dissipate his studious seriousness, but it did make it nearly impossible for him to get a straight answer about anything out of her.

“You don’t have your birth certificate,” Barry said as if he was trying to center himself after having received some very bad news. “Okay. We can get around that. Where were you born?”

“Let’s see…” Lup chewed on her lip as if she were actually thinking about it. “I was born in the wagon of a traveling show. My mama used to dance for the money they’d throw. Papa would do whatever he could…” He cut her off.

“I don’t want to call you a liar, but I’m 95% sure those are the lyrics to a Cher song.”

“Aw, you didn’t even let me get to the part when we picked up a boy just south of Mobile, gave him a ride, filled him with a hot meal. I was sixteen, he was twenty-one…” She did a little shimmy. He quickly looked down at the financial aid forms, adorably embarrassed.

“Are you gonna tell me where you were actually born?” She tapped her finger on her chin, leaning back against her pillows. 

“Well, we lived in a one-room, run-down shack on the outskirts of New Orleans. We didn’t have money for food or rent, to say the least we were hard-pressed…then mama spent every last penny we had to buy me a dancin’ dress.” He pinched the bridge of his nose, but he was smiling.

“That’s ‘Fancy.’”

“Two for two! You’re good!” she giggled.

“Do you want me to help you or not?” He waved some leftover smoke out of his face with the papers. She blew a long breath out through her nose as if he were really ruining her good time.

“Look, man, I don’t know.” The casualness of the statement was forced.

“You don’t know what?” He blinked, a little slow on the uptake.

“I don’t know where I was born.” Lup shrugged, looking at her lap. “I don't even know which state. I mean, I can find out, but I'll have to make a couple phone calls.” She pushed her hair back from her forehead and flipped her box open again. She made a face. It was empty.

“Okay,” Barry said kindly with a nod, leaning his elbows on his knees. “That's okay. We’ll circle back. How about that social security card?”

*

By the time Magnus and Taako returned, it was getting dark. Barry had been released from his bureaucratic duties some time before with an open invitation to come back anytime, and Lup had stashed the incomplete forms under her bed, not yet ready to share her plans with anybody else.

“I brought a few more candles to add to this rampant fire hazard,” Magnus announced, tossing a paper bag onto the couch. His cat, Fisher, who hated everybody else, immediately emerged from where he had been hiding all day and wound his way around Magnus' ankles, doing his very best to trip him. Lup was eating Spaghetti-Os out of a disposable bowl, and normally, Taako would immediately have torn into her for eating “dog food” without “an ounce of shame,” but he didn't even look at his sister as he closed and locked the door.

“Did you finally get him to the group?” Killian asked, raising her eyebrows. She was doing sit-ups on the floor, which was her main downtime activity. Magnus nodded, smiling smugly, and clapped Taako on the back, almost knocking him over. 

“He’s a convert!”

“It was a one-time deal,” Taako grumbled, unlacing his boots. 

“How’s Krav, honey?” Lucretia asked. He just shook his head and made a beeline for the room he shared with his sister. Lup wanted to follow, but she knew that he needed a minute. Maybe more than a minute this time. Lucretia sighed and put her camera aside. “I feel like we should do something.” 

“Nothing to do,” Carey said sharply. She was at the sink, doing some dishes by candlelight. “Honestly, it’ll probably be easier on Taako if he doesn’t linger too long like this.”

“Carey,” Killian protested, sitting up and looking over her shoulder. Carey whirled, brandishing a wet sponge like a weapon. 

“What? Am I wrong?”

“Just…take it down a notch. Please.”

“Would you want to see _me_ like that? Would you want me to hang around, suffering, for months? Is that how you want to remember me?”

“That’s not what I said.” Killian’s defeated tone made it plain that this was not the first time they’d had this conversation. 

“Sounds like it’s time for the emergency booze,” Magnus said jovially, ruffling Carey’s short hair. She swatted at his hand.

“I’m not in the mood,” she snapped, turning back to the dishes. 

“Not in the mood for booze? Who are you and what have you done with my Carey?” He was already reaching for the top of the refrigerator, where they kept two bottles of stolen liquor for particularly bad nights.

“I’m always in the mood for booze. I’m not in the mood for _you._ ”

“Grumpy,” he teased, shaking a half-full bottle of rum in front of her face. She snatched it with surprising dexterity.

“I’ve just been thinking all day about how half of everyone we know is dead now,” Carey said, taking a generous shot of rum and walking into the living room, sinking down onto the mattress on the floor. She passed the bottle to Lucretia. “Magic Brian died like yesterday. I mean, nobody really liked him, but he died.” Nobody remembered why Magic Brian was called Magic Brian, but that was how he had been introduced to them, and nobody had ever questioned it. It didn't particularly matter anymore.

“Harsh,” Lucretia said, coughing as she swallowed and passing the bottle to Lup. “Regular Brian died, too.” Unfortunately for him, Regular Brian had moved into the neighborhood after Magic Brian, and thus his fate had been sealed. They hadn't known him particularly well, but at least he hadn't been as universally reviled as his counterpart.

“Any other dead Brians we have to drink to?” Lup asked wryly. “Just call ‘em out. I'll chug until you're done.” She took her shot and passed the bottle to Magnus.

“No more Brians, but…Johann.” Magnus lifted the bottle heavenward and then drank.

“Aw, shit, I miss him. Now I'm sad.” Lucretia grimaced. Johann had been a musician, and a good one, unlike Carey's brother and everyone else they knew who called themselves “musicians”. Receiving one of his homemade mixtapes was always everybody in the neighborhood's favorite Christmas present.

“Noelle,” Killian put in quietly. An apple-cheeked girl who had moved to the city from rural Wisconsin with nobody and nothing. Her family had not come to see her in the end stages of her illness and had declined to take her body back to her home state once she was gone. 

“Roswell.” A burly, jovial potter who had always been covered head to toe in clay.

“Sloane and Hurley.” A couple of drag-racing, needle-happy lesbians who had died within hours of one another in the same hospital room. “Oh, and Jenkins, that dude with the rainbow bow-tie who was always on the B train? Remember him? I actually don’t know if he counts as someone we knew, but I really liked that bow-tie.”

“That guy Cam. He was basically just a head by the time they finished amputating everything they needed to amputate.”

“Greg Grimaldis died before he could pay me back that fifteen dollars he owed me,” Lup griped. “Fucker.”

“Is Avi still…around?” Killian asked delicately.

“He’s around, but he’s drunk as a skunk,” Magnus replied. “I saw him last week. He didn’t look good. I think he’s on the street.”

There was a power in speaking the names of the dead and the dying. The world was trying its best to forget these people. Their families didn't host funerals, there were no memorials, and many of them went to unmarked government graves. It was a pitiless death. The only thing that kept its victims from obscurity was the small, shameful, outcast band of the living who remembered them in apartments like these with no lights, sometimes no heat, sometimes no roof at all. They polished off the bottle in relative silence. Magnus helped Killian drag an extremely drunk and belligerent Carey to bed. Lup flipped the bird to the blinking red light on Lucretia's camera and headed back to the bedroom with a candle in hand. By its inconsistent light, she could make out her brother curled up in a tight knot under his blanket. She crawled into bed with him, setting the candle down on the nightstand, and jostled him playfully.

“I know you’re not asleep. Let me paint your nails.”

“By fucking candlelight? A trained Capuchin monkey would do a better job,” he said without rolling over, his voice muffled in the pillow.

“Well, unfortunately for you, you don’t have a trained fucking Capuchin monkey. You have me.” He sat up grudgingly and eyed her with suspicion. 

“Are you drunk?” She shook her head, and touched her pointer finger to her nose to prove it.

“Carey hogged most of the emergency booze.”

“Typical.” He assumed the position with his hands splayed in front of him and wiggled them expectantly. She uncapped the nail polish, which was a shade of red somewhere between stately and trashy, and began to apply it in long, satisfying stripes. After a moment of silence, Taako let out an annoyed breath,

“Don’t say what you're thinking about saying,” he warned. “Don’t you dare come at me with that shit tonight.”

“What was I going to say, Madame fucking Marie?” 

He imitated her voice. “Have you been eating? Have you been taking your AZT? You have to take care of yourself before you can take care of anyone else.” Lup laughed.

“You’re not wrong.”

“I’ve been eating and taking my AZT and doing yoga at dawn and bleaching my asshole and whatever else I have to say to make you believe that I’m fine.” She didn’t say anything, but she tucked his hair behind his ear. For a moment, he looked as if he was going to say something biting, but then he closed his mouth and looked down at his nails. 

“Me and you are going to get through this, babe. We get through everything.” She smiled. “We got through being seventeen.”

“Oh my God.” He crossed himself dramatically with his unpainted hand. “I thought we agreed never to speak the names of those particular coke-fueled demons ever again lest we inadvertently summon.” Lup threw her head back and cackled. It was a miracle that they had made it to twenty. Homeless most of the time, high most of the time, always one stumble away from being arrested for one thing or another. When Lup walked through the old neighborhood, she still recognized most of the cops on sight, and they most definitely recognized her back.

“I’m trying out this little thing they call ‘perspective.’” 

“Fuck your perspective. I’d rather be turning tricks on any godforsaken boardwalk in the continental U.S.A. than living this shitty timeline to its inevitable shitty conclusion.”

“In another universe, you’re standing on a boardwalk in, like, New Jersey right now, wearing some shiny Lycra shorts and saying the same thing, only opposite.” Maybe she was a little drunk.

“Oh, wow. Incredible. Harvard called. When can you start?” She slapped his shoulder. 

“You know what we need? When the power gets turned back on, we should borrow a TV from that guy upstairs and have a movie night like we used to have at auntie’s when she worked thirds. Just us. No nerds allowed.” His smile faded.

“I dunno. I’m gonna be busy. They’re changing my hours at the restaurant, and I’m going to be at the hospital a lot.”

“Okay,” she said carefully. There had been a time in their lives when she had known all of his feelings right when they happened. She’d had a hard time separating which parts of her were actually _her_ and which parts of her were _them_. But they had grown up. There were things that she didn’t know. There were whole painful patches of his life that she hadn’t been present for, like scabs that she could see without knowing the cause of the injuries. Now, she knew even less than ever. She had been to visit Kravitz once or twice in the beginning, but he was a proud man, and her visits had become less and less welcome as he deteriorated. Taako didn’t talk about it, and she didn’t try to make him, but she wished he would. She screwed the cap back on the nail polish.

“You’re all done.”

He leaned forward and laid his head on her shoulder. She wrapped her arms around him, and God, she could feel his ribcage, his shoulder blades jutting out at painful angles. She didn’t trust herself to speak, but she tried to broadcast to him, tried to harness some of that pre-birth twin telepathy. _I’m going to take care of us._


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is it, ya'll! Maybe now that I've purged this from my system I can write something that doesn't suck your entire soul out when you read it!
> 
> My original intention was to work in a scene about John being an indomitable slumlord, but it turns out that lengthy arguments about rent aren't that much fun to write (or read, presumably). Plus it was too hard to fit into this timeline I've got going on in this last chapter. It was replaced by the Carey-Lucretia scene, which I hope is slightly more interesting to read than a nuanced breakdown of health code violations.

The restaurant where Taako worked was a small, smoke-yellowed 24/7 diner with metal tables and dirty tile floors mostly populated by shift workers, hookers taking a coffee break, homeless people trying to get out of the cold, and a cadre of lonely neighborhood geezers who congregated in a corner and yelled at one another in creaky Spanish over coffee. It was hardly ever busy. There was only ever a staff of two or three: usually, Ren, the cute, twangy waitress, and Taako in the kitchen, frying up omelets and baking pies. That day, the whole place was empty except for the two of them.

“So guess what we’re doin’ after work,” Ren drawled, popping her bubblegum. She was leaning against the register while Taako leaned through the order window, his elbows on the shelf where finished dishes would be placed, flipping through a magazine idly.

“What?”

“You ever heard of the The Hunger?”

“Is that a crash diet?” he asked absentmindedly. “Sign me up. I could lose five pounds.” She eyed him up incredulously.

“Five pounds of what? Concealer?” He clapped his hand over his heart, mock-offended.

“You absolute bitch.” Ren rolled her eyes.

“You walked into that one. If you lost five pounds you’d be able to fit into them little dresses for Barbie dolls.” She shielded her face from the rolled-up magazine he tried to smack her with, snickering. “The Hunger’s a nightclub, sugar. It just opened up.” He made a face and spread his magazine back out on the ledge. 

“I really don’t feel like it, Ren.”

“Oh, c’mon. I miss tearin’ it up with you and your sister on the weekends.”

“I, personally, do not miss blacking out behind dumpsters and inhaling that shit they use to deworm dogs on a weekly basis.” He licked his index finger and flipped the page pointedly.

“It’s, like, 30% dog dewormer, 70% coke. Besides, you ain’t got worms, do ya? That shit works.” It was his turn to roll his eyes. 

“I wouldn’t have worms anyway. Someone around here takes the FDA health and safety standards seriously, and it is not you.”

“You _used_ to be fun.” She poked him in the shoulder accusingly. One side of his mouth quirked upwards in what was almost an expression of cruelty.

“Weird. It’s almost like my body is slowly destroying itself from the inside out, huh?” 

“Fuck you. Unfair.” Ren didn’t let up, even for a second, even after he played the HIV card. That was one of the things that Taako liked about her. She threw a lot of different parties, but none of them were pity parties. “Okay, twist my arm. How about this. No coke, no cops, no dumpsters. No E, no weird loose pills from the bottom of Lup’s purse, no gettin’ fucked by weirdos in bathrooms. Just good ol’ fashioned booze and dancin’ like we’re in a cornfield in fuckin’ Iowa or somethin’.”

“You need to let Magnus give you one of his pamphlets about setting yourself free from the prison of narcotics abuse.”

“Psh, as if. I’ve seen that guy drink enough to kill six of me.”

“That’s because he _is_ six of you. Hold on. I need more coffee if you’re gonna be this difficult to tolerate today.” He ducked back into the kitchen. Just then, Lucretia pushed the door open, jingling the old cow bell tied to the door handle. She showed up whenever Ren was working to get free coffee and pie. The waitress had a soft spot for her. Taako would give her things for free as well, of course, but only after quite a bit more razzing, and it was a gamble whether or not it would be worth it after all was said and done.

“What’s up, Ren?” she said brightly.

“Nothin’, baby girl. Just shootin’ the shit.” Lucretia sat down at the counter and pulled her camera out of her bag, settling it on her lap. “You want the usual?”

“Yes, please.” Ren busied herself with the display case in front of the register, taking out and unwrapping an apple pie. She started to search for the serving knife.

“Is that Lucy I hear?” Taako called from the kitchen.

“It’s me!”

“Lucy, please tell this dissolute woman that we cannot possibly go clubbing tonight.” He pushed through the kitchen door with a cup of coffee and sat down next to Lucretia, crossing his legs with an indignant flourish. 

“Why not? Sounds like fun. You need to get out of the house.”

“Ugh, I thought I could count on you to be a huge stick in the mud,” he groaned, setting his coffee down on the counter. As soon as it had left his hands, Lucretia snatched the cup and took a triumphant sip. 

“How’s this: I’ll come with to make sure you don’t do anything _too_ fun, since I _am_ a huge stick in the mud. I’ll even invite Carey and Killian. Carey talks a big game, but you know they’re an old married couple. They’ll want to be home by eleven.”

“Okay, deal,” Taako said, narrowing his eyes. “But if you point that camera at me even once, I will shove it so far down your throat that your movie will become a medical documentary.”

“Deal.” They shook hands.

Lucretia hung around the diner until Taako and Ren were replaced by the much less charismatic night shift crew, meticulously setting up establishing shots of the diner in action and taking what some would say was far too much footage of the coffee machine percolating. They walked back to the apartment together in the gathering dusk. It appeared to be empty when they arrived, but the door to the second bedroom where Carey and Killian slept was closed, indicating that at least one of them was home. 

“Are you kiddin’ me with this shit? I have to do my makeup by fuckin’ candlelight?” Ren complained, cross-legged on the bed in front of a plate-sized cosmetics mirror, surrounded by Taako’s piecemeal collection of various makeups and several flickering candles emitting several clashing scents.

“Laura Ingalls made it work,” he supplied, digging through a dresser drawer that definitely wasn’t his. Lup wouldn’t mind. 

“She didn’t even. You ever seen that bitch? Ratchet.” 

“I’ll go get the girls,” Lucretia said over her shoulder on her way out of the room, obviously uncomfortable with the elaborate preparations that preceded a night out. She had never been much of a showpony. In her own humble opinion, she belonged behind the camera, not in frame. 

“Hey, guys—” She opened the door to the second bedroom without knocking, then stopped short. Carey was in the middle of hurriedly unlooping a belt from around her upper arm. There was only one candle in the room, so it was hard to make out any details, but Lucretia caught the twin metallic glints of a needle and a spoon lying on the bed. It wasn’t hard to tell what ritual she had just missed.

“Close the fucking door,” Carey said, her voice low. Lucretia complied almost automatically. She stood at the end of the bed, speechless, waiting for the other woman to say something. Finally, Carey did, holding Lucretia's gaze coldly. “If you tell Killian or Magnus about this, I will seriously murder you.”

“I won’t tell anybody, but…”

“Spare me.” Carey held up her hand. “I know, alright? I know. This is my decision and there’s nothing you can do. There. You’re released from your moral fucking duty. Go away.” She rolled down her sleeve and gestured dismissively at the exit. Carey was normally abrasive, outspoken, even harsh, but she wasn’t normally cruel. Lucretia felt tears burning behind her eyes. She hesitated another moment, then stepped out of the room, closing the door carefully behind her. 

“Well?” Taako said expectantly when she returned to the other room looking up from where he was halfway through putting on a pair of not-his-pantyhose. Lucretia swallowed.

“They’re not coming. Hey, Ren, will you do my makeup, too? I suck at it.”

*

The Hunger was like most nightclubs in that part of the city—cavernous, unbearably loud, and packed with a colorful array of sideshow freaks. It became evident very quickly that Ren had no intention of adhering to her own “hugs, not drugs” policy. Not long after their arrival, she disappeared to go to the bathroom and came back loaded, loud and jittery.

Taako rolled his eyes at Lucretia and pantomimed a gag. He was three fruity cocktails in, and it was evident. It didn’t take much anymore. She was still clutching her first gin and tonic in one sweaty hand, afraid to lose control of the situation. 

“Should we go?” Lucretia mouthed, but he shook his head.

“Let’s dance.” He grabbed her hand and towed her onto the dance floor. She couldn’t help but think that he looked like somebody else pretending to be Taako, doing a poor imitation of his dance moves, his face set under the flashing lights like clubbing was a chore. She remembered times not too long before when they had all gone out together and he had danced circles around them all, dragging poor Kravitz around on his two left feet, always laughing at something. It was hard to reconcile the two people as one and the same. Lucretia tried to talk herself into having fun, but she just felt overwhelmed, driven out of her body by the noise and the heat and the sickening gut-punches of anxiety that she couldn't quell. All of a sudden, as she watched, Taako’s eyes rolled back in his head. He pitched forward into her, and she instinctively grabbed him under the arms, her knees buckling under the dead weight. 

One of the dancers, not yet high enough to be oblivious, noticed her panicking and helped her haul his limp form off the dance floor and outside, into the shock of the freezing night air. She sank down onto the damp, cold pavement, her ears ringing from the music, Taako draped awkwardly across her lap.

“Someone call 911,” she said, but none of the stragglers standing around smoking outside of the club moved. Nobody was going to willingly call the cops down on this place. “Shit. Come on, wake up, wake up.” Ren stumbled out of the doors, letting out a burst of heat and noise and colored light.

“What happened?” she slurred, teetering on her heels.

“I don’t know! He just passed out.” Just then, Taako opened his eyes.

“Holy shit,” Lucretia breathed, gripped by a relief tinged with concern. “I thought you were fucking dead. Are you okay?” He let out a wordless grumble of what could have either been agreement or disagreement. “We have to take you to the hospital right now.” His eyes focused sharply on her face.

“I’m not going to the hospital.”

“You were out for…I don’t know, more than a minute. That’s really not good. You need to see a doctor.”

“I do not want to go to the hospital.” He sat up, pressing the heels of his hands into his eyes for a moment as if to dispel a persistent dizziness. “If you call an ambulance, I’ll be gone by the time they get here. It’s not happening.” He struggled to his feet, waving Ren's hands away. “And if either of you tell my sister about this, I swear to God.”

“Let’s at least get a cab home. Ren, do you have any cash left on you?” They scrounged up enough money between the three of them to pay the fare back to their building. Lucretia and Ren helped Taako up the stairs. Carey and Killian were presumably asleep in the second bedroom, and Magnus was snoring on the couch, too heavy a sleeper to stir. Ren immediately passed out on the mattress with her shoes still on, but Lucretia made sure that Taako got to bed without further incident. Lup wasn’t there—she had been picking up overnights—so Lucretia laid down on her bed fully clothed, on top of the blanket, still rigid with nerves, facing her friend.

“Why are you staring at me?” Taako grumbled after a moment.

“I’m making sure you’re okay.”

“I’m okay.”

“Shut up. Lup’ll kill me if I let you die in your sleep.”

“I’m not gonna die.”

“Exactly. Because I’m watching to make sure you don’t.” He sighed and rolled over.

“Fine. Creep.”

Lucretia stayed awake for a long time, replaying the moment in the club over and over again when she’d seen his eyes go white, replaying Carey undoing her homemade tourniquet, watching Taako's shoulder rise and fall with his breathing, until, against her own will, she dropped into sleep.

*

It was strange to see the city early in the morning. Lup was familiar with the daytime, the evening, the late, late night, and even the wee hours, but this was the first time in her life when she had been privy to the hours just after sunrise. It was the same dirty old shithole, of course, but it had a shinier finish. It seemed like it had a bit more potential. There were kids burdened with huge backpacks on their way to school, people walking purposefully to work, clusters of little birds looking for breakfast in the frozen gutters. Lup herself was walking home from work. Every part of her body hurt. Cleaning office buildings all night was a lot more difficult than cutting fake checks, but she had promised herself, had promised her brother that she would try to walk the straight and narrow. The straighter and narrower, at least. She was going to go to college, get a degree, be one of these people with a real job that started at 9am. But staying awake all night was starting to take its toll on her…she thought maybe she would stop by a guy she knew, get some uppers, anything to make it easier…

She stopped in the middle of the sidewalk and blinked her bleary eyes hard. Just in front of her was a very familiar pair of jeans bent over the open hood of a van, pulled to the side of the road and half-dismantled.

“Barry Bluejeans?” The figure stood up, turned, and broke into a smile. Barry had black oil smeared on his arms all the way up to his elbows, but after a night of scrubbing toilets and waxing floors, Lup was sure she didn’t look any classier. 

“Lup! Hi. The van broke down, and I’m…trying to fix it.”

“Oh, shit! Where are you going to sleep?” He had the dorky jean jacket tied around his waist, and it occurred to her that it was probably the only coat he owned. His cheeks were already red, this time from the wind rather than from embarrassment. 

“Dunno. The library at the college? A shelter?”

“They’ll all be full!” She surprised herself with just how easily the next words came out of her mouth. “Come and stay at our place for a couple days. It’s basically a souped-up orphanage. Ya’ll can get cozy on our luxury floor mattress in your separate sleeping bags. I’ll spoon Lucretia.” His smile faded.

“I can’t impose on you like that.”

“No such thing! Bring your friend, too.”

“Dav is really proud, I don’t know if he’ll…”

“You don’t know if I’ll what?” An older man holding two steaming corner store coffees in his gloved hands rounded the van.

“Dav, this is Lup. I met her at work the other day. She offered us her place for a while.”

“Great. Let’s go. I’m freezing my ass off,” Dav replied brusquely with a tight smile. This was clearly not his day.

“There’s no power, but there _is_ gas heat and furniture, so that’s something,” Lup supplied, returning his smile. He nodded.

“I’ll take it.” 

“I’ll pay you in cigarettes,” Barry said, a little sheepishly, untying his jacket and slinging it on.

After they gathered up with essentials from the van, she led the way back to the apartment, which was only a few blocks away by then. Lup had never had any trouble filling potentially awkward silences. She bitched about her job, her coworker—a nasty Hungarian woman who always made Lup do all the dirty work—and her boss, who did not pay her as much as hotel maids got paid, but it was kind of worth it not to have to deal with the post-fuck bedding, wasn't it? When they arrived, the apartment was apparently empty except for Magnus, who was shivering on the couch under four blankets, Fisher the cat snuggled up on his lap.

“What’s up, Hulk Hogan?” Lup asked, ruffling his hair on her way past.

“I called off work. I feel like shit.”

“Aw, that sucks. This is Barry, and his friend…” She gestured vaguely at the other man, who looked like he would rather do anything else on the planet than listen to her talk for another second.

“Davenport,” he introduced himself wearily.

“Nice to meet you. I’m Magnus.” He lapsed into an ugly, ragged coughing fit that rattled his entire body. It might have shaken a smaller person apart entirely.

“Anything I can do?” Lup asked, tossing her coat on the mattress.

“Can you make some tea or something? I’m freezing.” She nodded, laying her wrist against his forehead and tsking maternally.

“You have a fever. You should be seeing a doctor.”

“Can’t afford it, Lup. You know that.”

“I know. But you should be.” She began to fill a kettle with water and lit a match for the stove. “When’s the clinic open?” 

“I don’t remember. Ask Carey when she gets home.”

“You're gonna actually go, right? Because if one more of you fuckers fakes me out I'm gonna start taking you myself.”

“Yes, mom,” he intoned, shooting her a grateful smile nevertheless.

Once the water had boiled, Lup and Barry left Magnus and Davenport holding piping mugs of tea and discussing where to get cheap car parts and stepped out onto the fire escape to smoke. It was too cold for it, but it was worth it to spare Magnus' lungs. 

“Is he alright?” Barry asked, gesturing over his shoulder with his lighter.

“In case you haven’t made the connection, most of the people around here are afflicted with the _gay plague._ ” She wiggled her fingers, eyes widening sarcastically. 

“I know what he has,” he said levelly. “I just wanted to know if he’s alright.” This was clearly not the response she had expected. She shrugged, refusing to meet his eyes.

“He’ll be fine. Or else he won’t be. I’m not a fucking doctor.”

“He…doesn’t have any family to stay with?” Lup huffed a cloud of cigarette smoke through her nose indignantly.

“Do _you_ have any family you could stay with?”

“Point taken.”

“No, everybody I know has been pretty definitively kicked to the curb.”

“Because of…”

“You ask a lot of questions, Mr. Bluejeans. Some of them, yeah. Some of them, a long time before that.” They smoked in silence for a moment. 

“I’m studying to be a pathologist. I want to study viruses like HIV, to understand how they work. The social stigma is the hard part, but the disease…that’s something I can wrap my head around. To try to fix.”

“Is that so? Let me read your palm,” she said with a coy smile, stubbing out her cigarette and holding out her hand. He looked at her for a moment, as if trying to ascertain whether or not she was serious, then extended his palm.

“Earth hands,” she pronounced, adopting an authoritative, if airy, tone. “Practical, logical, grounded.” She traced the lines on his palm with her fingertip almost studiously. “A deep head line. That means you’re a thinker. Short life line. Don’t worry, that doesn’t mean you’re gonna die young; it just means you’re independent. Your sun line and fate line don’t cross. That means you’re a self-made man, or you will be, someday. And your heart line…wow, deep and long. That means that even though your capacity for love is almost endless, there’s only room for one great romance in your life, Barry Bluejeans. I hope you haven’t found it and lost it already.” He shook his head no, entranced. “Story checks out. Not only a genius, but a genuine humanitarian as well. Palms don’t lie.” She turned his hand palm down and patted it, though she did not release it.

“You’re good at that.” She wrinkled her nose self-effacingly.

“Think so? I did it for ten bucks a pop on the boardwalk in Atlantic City one summer. You want to kiss me now, don’t you?”

“Did you read that in my palm?” he asked, half-serious. She laughed.

“No. You’re just looking at my lips.” He ducked his head, blushing.

“You got me.”

“Then do it, dumbass.” So he did.

Lup had kissed a lot of people in her life, but she had never been kissed in quite this way. It was strangely reverent. It wasn’t the sexiest kiss she’d ever had, or even necessarily the best one, but it was the most genuine. Like he didn’t even care if he got to fuck her later or not. Like maybe he just wanted to kiss her. 

“Well, damn. Maybe I’ll spoon _you_ instead. Your friend can have Lucretia.” He laughed, a little nervously. She winked, but her smile had lost some of its confidence. The butterflies she felt fluttering in her stomach spelled danger. All she had to do was look around at her closest friends to see the truth in that, but what was she going to say? _I know we just met and this was our first kiss, but you have to promise not to get sick or kill yourself or get addicted to hard drugs or just leave me for no reason._

It had been a while since she thought about herself, about what was going to happen in the weeks and months and years to come. It was terrifying. She was going to live through a lot more death. There was no more stability in the future than there had been in the past. But this guy was camping out in a van in December. She didn’t have to tell him that shit was hard, that it would never stop being hard. He had already seen her life the way it was, without any ostentation or creative misdirection, and he still liked her for some reason. She had never been the type of person to hold herself back from possibility, even when possibilities were few and far between. 

“Are you okay?” Barry asked, pulling back a little as if he was afraid that he’d offended her somehow.

“Yeah,” she replied, leaning in for another quick kiss, a reassurance that he hadn’t done anything wrong. “I’m okay. I’m cold, though.”

“Let’s go back inside then. I’m sure Dav is talking your friend’s ear off about vintage van parts. We should rescue him.”

“Okay.” When he turned away, she let herself have a private half-second of that panicked joy that girls much younger than Lup sometimes felt, the one where they called their best friend from their childhood bedroom on a pink plastic phone and said, _so I think I really like this boy._

*

The morning after their ill-fated clubbing incident, Taako got up with the sun. He left Lucretia asleep on Lup’s bed, glittery makeup smeared all over her face and all over the pillowcase, but he roused Ren and kicked her out before she started scrounging around for some hair of the dog that had bitten her the night before. He took a shower and put on the warmest clothes he could find. No makeup. Hair stuffed into a knit hat. It didn’t matter. It had never really mattered.

It took forever to get to the hospital by train. He dozed off with his head against the frosty window, starting awake every few minutes when the baby on the other end of the car let out a particularly shrill cry. By the time he finally disembarked to walk the remaining short distance to the imposing, greyish cluster of buildings, he felt as if he were in one of those bad dreams that seem to last forever, characterized by a slow burn of dread that gradually becomes unbearable.

A doctor caught Taako's arm on the way into Kravitz's room. 

“Hey,” he said, keeping his voice low, eyes darting around the hall. “I’ve seen you around here a lot. I’m not supposed to tell you anything because you’re not family, but I want you to be prepared. He crashed early this morning. We resuscitated him, but he doesn’t have long left. He's under some pretty heavy sedation right now, so don't be surprised if he doesn't wake up when you go in.”

“Thanks.” It didn’t sound like his voice. He didn't feel it leave his mouth. The doctor released him with a curt nod and took off briskly down the hall. Taako went into the room.

He crawled into the bed without turning the light on or opening the curtains, skirting more wires and tubes than usual. Kravitz opened his eyes. They were glassy and unfocused, but there was a spark of recognition there, just enough.

“Hey,” Taako said softly, propping himself up on one elbow. He cupped the other man's hollow cheek and stroked the papery skin with his thumb. His lips moved, but nothing came out. Taako shook his head. “You don’t have to say anything. It’s okay. You know that I love you, right?” A small nod, barely there. “And I know that you love me too. So there’s nothing else to say.” He laid his head on the pillow, cutting himself off before he started to ramble. In profile, he saw Kravitz's eyes flutter shut again. Taako draped his arm over the other man's chest and forced himself to lie still, to be there for whatever time was left. After a while, he dozed off. 

He dreamed that they were back in the veritable closet of Kravitz’s studio apartment, in the bed that was one of the only pieces of furniture in the entire place. He had never felt quite as safe anywhere else. In the dream, he was watching Krav sleep. He was going to wake up any minute. He had an internal clock that roused him every day at eight on the dot no matter what. When Taako asked him how the hell he did that, had he sold his soul to some sort of morning-person devil, Kravitz had replied that when he was younger, he had chanted the time he wanted to wake up out loud to himself three times every night before he fell asleep, to set an intention for himself. _Eight’o’clock. Eight’o’clock. Eight’o’clock._ The only catch was that now he could never sleep in. 

When Taako woke up, it was to the long keen of a flat-line.

**Author's Note:**

> One (1) point of no monetary or actual value to anyone who can name which Poe story that is without Googling it.


End file.
